Madeleine McCann: Ben Needham And Another Maddie In Benidorm

Long before the disappearance of Madeleine McCann from a Portuguese holiday apartment in 2007 rocked the world and its media, Sheffield-born baby Ben Needham disappeared from the Greek island of Kos.

It did not. The world never reacted to Ben Needham. Greece barely did. In the pre-rolling news age, even the British press were late in picking up the story.

But the blond youngster’s angelic face is nowhere near as well known as that of Madeleine’s.

Because when an innocent child goes missing, his or her looks matter.

But it’s not a comparison Ben’s mother Kerry likes to dwell on, as she revealed during last night’s Tonight programme special that examined her young son’s disappearance. In 1991, while expat Kerry worked in a nearby hotel, 21-month-old Ben went missing from the garden of a farm house her parents were rennovating. They were inside the house at the time but when they came outside to check on Ben, he was gone. He has not been seen since.

“I try not to compare Ben’s case to that of Madeleine McCann’s but I look at the help the family has had from the British investigation and yes, I do want the same,” a visibly exhausted Kerry reveals to the cameras.

The only similarities are the key facts: a British child has gone missing overseas and we have no idea what happened to her.

The British authorities failed to get involved and it is only now, 20 years later, that the Greek authorities have just agreed to re-open the investigation.

Still, the paper feels a need to add:

It’s almost unbelievable in its contrast to the McCann case and the media frenzy that ensued, and Kerry does well not to drive herself mad by constantly comparing the two.

We do not know what happened to Madeleine McCann. But still, her name is used as the benchmark for what could happen.

Mother Toni Clarkson who found an intruder looming over her young son’s bed at their Spanish holiday apartment said: ‘It could have been another Maddie McCann.’

Er..?

Toni Clarkson snatched six-year-old Jacob to safety before she and her partner Paul chased the prowler out of their Benidorm room – only to later realise he had been in there for 15 minutes raiding their safe.

He was looking for money?

The 1.9m (6ft 4in) Spanish intruder has never been caught but may have used a cloned room key card to gain entry.

How do we know he was Spanish?

Mrs Clarkson, from Solihull, says:

“I opened my eyes and saw a stranger standing over the bed. I managed to jump on his back, near the stairs but he just shouted at me in Spanish and shrugged me off.”

Harrowing stuff. But in what way has it got anything to do with the missing child?

Kate McCann has been named as one of the country’s 20 most inspirational women:

This is not because adding her name to any press release will create a media buzz. It ti because, as judges’ chairwoman Sue James explains:

“Since Madeleine disappeared in 2007, Kate has worked tirelessly to keep the family’s plight in the public eye, and supports the charity Missing People. We felt Kate particularly deserved a place on the list because, over the past year, she has not only published her memoir, which so poignantly charted her daughter’s disappearance and the continuing search to find her, but she also gave evidence to a parliamentary inquiry into the treatment of the parents of missing children. By doing this she used her media profile to support those cases that haven’t had such an impact on the public consciousness.”